WWIIOL IS GREAT NOW!!

[indian]

I have seen HT [erpsnally work with one person to get his game working right and find out the problem.  

PR makes a big difference.

[Kieran]

I have spoken with HT a few times, Pyro a few times, Ronni, Yankee, etc. If I e-mailed, I had an answer inside two days. My problems (what few and minor though they've been), if not fixed every time, always received prompt and courteous attention. My e-mails to CRS sent months ago have yet to result in any response. Even iEN would send me a curt, "Sorry, looks like you're screwed!", and I was no fan of iEN.

[Vruth]

What I don't understand is why they want $60 just to buy a game that I then have to shelve out over ANOTHER $120 a year just to play.

The box version of their product is pooched and you have to download HUGE patches to play. If you are a dialup user, which still accounts for 90% of the internet population, 90% of your customers won't bother and shelf the game.

HTC didn't charge me $60 just to get the software to play Aces High.

Their poor marketing on the publisher's side is a direct result of their chapter 11 filing. Don't blame Cornered Rat, blame Playnet.

V.

[Udie]

hehe perseption is a funny animal.  I play WW2 OL about 2 hours a night on average.  I absolutely love the ground action. Last night I was set up with a 20mm flak 30 in a clump of trees defending a town for the axis. Blenhimes were making low level strafing passes and I was trying to hit them.  Suddenly about 200 ro 300 yards away I see an enemy truck drop off a large group of about 20 infantry at the bottom of the hill I was on.  I watched them for about 20 to 30 minutes while they worked their way up the hill keeping cover in bushes and trees. I had em pegged    I don't think they saw me before I started shooting.  I waited for them to cross a little field about 150 yards from me. They didn't have a choice but to cross in the open. hehe they should have gone in 2's but they stayed clumped together and made easy targets    

 From the ground perspective it truely is the best game I've got. OFP is nice, but the map is small and vis range is smaller too.  In the air is a diferent story.  Most of the time it's ok frame rate wise, but as soon as I get near a large city the FPS go down to about 10.  It's been like that on 3 diferent computers in the past year.  The FM is good, but it has never been tweeked to get rid of the anomolies so I prefer AH or IL2 by far over ww2 OL.

 Seriosly though, if you've got the game give the ground part another try. You might suprise yourself and have a good time.  I doubt that will happen as people in game communities don't tend to be too forgiving once burned.  Except for WB with Wild Bill, but what choice do they have lol.

[Tac]

udie, whats yer username in ww2ol? I still have 15 days left, maybe ye can show me some stuff.

[Vortex]

I actually tried getting online with WWIIOL a few weeks back. They don't accept Amex though and since that's the only way I'll pay online, it was a no go.

Its too bad as I was wanting to give the ground game a try. Although I've got no first hand experience I just didn't see the airwar, with its huge dependancy on FPS, to be viable in this game. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, I dunno. For the reason mentioned above I returned the game already though so I likely won't know anytime soon :->.

I do think we'll see a continual shrinking of online flight sims though. The market for flight sims peaked about 3-4 years back and has been rolling back ever since, hosted MP ones included. Under the pressure from both a lack of variance (something WWIIOL was to change, but took to big a step, or one in the wrong direction) in the genre as well as other online games offering a different and possibly more interesting "carrot" (such as the still expanding MMRPG realm) I think this trend will continue.

Simple fact of the matter is that sims are only a fraction of the software market when compared to some of the big draws such as FPS', RPGs and the huge console market. When you go online there isn't much comparison. A single EQ server hosts 5+ times the players that one finds online in any of the online WWII air sims (AH, WIII, FA, WWIIOL) at any given time. Heck, all combined they still wouldn't top one EQ server I don't think...and EQ runs 20 or so of these to meet the demand. And then there's DAoC, UO, AC, etc.

Point being that with the above in mind its unlikely CRS/Playnet/whoever will find a bailout. The market is still heavily saturated. Combine that with the fact that its a whole lot harder getting people back than it is to get them in the first place, and you've got a tough row to hoe ahead of you with WWIIOL. If they do find a bailout it will likely be to pilfer some of their talent, redirecting it to the purchasers ongoing RPG or console projects, and then shelve/toilet the online sim...imo anyway. Financially these games just don't compare well to some of the other options out there therefore they don't make much sense as an ongoing investment for a larger company. Imo this market can only support one to two air combat sims. You're picking from a pretty static, or possibly evaporating, pool at this point.

Vortex

P.S. The link to Fletchman's post above is a good one, and raises a very valid point imo. A WWIIOL concept _could_ prove successful if it targeted the larger strategy oriented FPS communities as opposed to the already saturated flight sim market. Ergo, rebuild it without the air combat portion and concentrate on the infantry aspect. From there make it a much smaller scale and you might actually have something.

[Kieran]

This is similar to the thread at AGW, but I echo your thoughts; focus the project on the FPS aspect. The greatest potential market is not in the flight sim aspect, rather the grunts. Make it fun to be a grunt and you have plenty of time to flesh out the rest.